Amen, so I want to read in Acts
chapter 13 starting at verse 29 and I'm gonna go through verse
33 and then we're gonna come back to our outline and begin
to work through the implications of these verses I think they
may have had outlines in the back, but if not, that's okay.
You can follow us in the PowerPoint Acts 13 29 and when they had
fulfilled all that was written of him They took him down from
the tree, laid him in a sepulcher, but God raised him from the dead. And he was seen many days of
them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are
his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad
tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers
God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he
raised up Jesus again, as it is written also in the second
Psalm, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that he raised
him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption.
He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of
David. and we will stop right there.
Thus is the reading of God's word. We are in that pivotal
point of the book of Acts where the apostle Paul and others are
with him. Barnabas has headed up to Asia
Minor and they are speaking to a synagogue of believers, Jewish
believers, Jewish non-believers and Gentile believers all collectively
there together in the synagogue And they are seeking to explain
this message which has turned the world upside down and for
which the apostle Paul has now been commissioned to take the
gospel to the Gentiles. This is a major turn in the book
of Acts. The shift is going to occur here
shortly. What you and I want to know is
that we are in the heart of the apostle's message. He has stood
up, as was the custom in some of the Jewish churches, that
men stood to read, stood, to exhort, stood to preach and proclaim. And he is at that part of the
historical recollection of Israel's history and the promises made
to Israel, where he is now, unfortunately, having to remind Israel that
they were the initial, though not exclusive, culprit by which
Jesus Christ was crucified. That becomes the real nexus and
point of offense when you share the gospel with the Jews. And
so you and I can imagine that as we are thinking about that
proposition and you fulfilling the scriptures condemned him,
this is what we read in verse 27, for they that dwell at Jerusalem
and their rulers, those that dwell at Jerusalem, they're Jews
and their rulers, that's the high priests, the Sadducees and
Pharisees, because they did not know him, nor the voice of the
prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled
them in what? Condemning him. So will you mark
with me as we begin to work through our points, when you are sharing
the historical facts about the crucifixion of Christ, Do not
fall prey to sensitivity towards political sort of voices in the
church or outside of the church that would cause you to shrink
away from admitting what the scripture says about who it was
actually that put Christ to death. For the scriptures are very clear
And the apostles are braving and hazarding their own lives
when they recall again and again and again and again, as you guys
have learned from Acts chapter two on forward, you with wicked
hands have both crucified and killed the Lord of glory. That
point has to be paused and considered just briefly before we move forward.
Just imagine your own people group, your own ethnic group
being the immediate cause of the death of the Son of God and
Now you have to be the preacher of the person to remind them
that they were the culprits that requires grace To help you do
that And this reminds us once again that as we share the gospel
The gospel is not always good news to people and it's not always
initially good news to anyone and especially people whose hearts
are still at enmity with God. And that's why you and I need
the spirit of God. We need the spirit of God so
that our own personal interest can be taken out of the task
of sharing the gospel. I'll say that once again, we
need the grace of God so that our own personal interest can
be taken out. Otherwise you will shape what
you say. in order to not offend people
with whom you might highly regard and thus modify and compromise
the gospel. But if you appreciate what's
happening in the text, as Paul is working through the historicity,
he's waxing clearer and clearer and bolder and bolder about what
actually happened. With that in view, if you've
ever been a teacher, a Bible student, someone who shared the
word of God, Isn't it true that sometimes when you start sharing
the word, there's a little bit of shakiness there and you're
doing your best to get your equilibrium and you're trying to find your
words and you're asking the Lord to help you. And, and, and you're
settling into the discourse and you know, you have a particular
angle at what you want to go and you need him to retain your
mind. And you're asking him to keep
you from thinking about everything else. So you can stay on point. You guys follow what I'm saying.
And the Lord actually shows up and helps you out and settles
you down. And the next thing you experience
is a calm, a clarity of mind and a confidence, a calm, a clarity
of mind and a confidence. And what we call that is spiritual
focus, spiritual focus, not just focus, spiritual focus. And what that is, is the grace
of God to actually take you out of the equation and then use
you to do what he wants to do, where you aren't stumbling by
getting in the way of the mission. And it's a great thing when God
is able to settle you down, give you that calm, give you that
sense of confidence. And then you're communicating
God's word precisely the way he wants it done. Isn't that
a great thing? That's what's going on here in a real, real
sense. So under Christ died, according to the scriptures,
what Paul did was first anchor everything that he had stated
in this worship service in the word of God. I've been teaching
our guys on Saturday night, the whole concept and discipline
and doctrine of what, fellas? Homiletics. And homiletics is
basically the art and science of communicating. And more technically,
it is about preaching. But homily is really simply what? Having a conversation. talking. That's the way the word literally
is used. However, there are rules to homily,
rules to biblical communication, rules to preaching that people
want to adhere to in order to make sure they execute what their
assignment is. And what we see going on with
the apostle Paul, and we saw this with our Lord Jesus Christ
in our own men's meeting, is that to be a legitimate homiletician
or a sound biblical speaker, let's call it a biblical speaker. I want to be a biblical speaker. You and I have to make sure that
our talk is tethered. Y'all remember tetherball? Tethered to the text. So our talk has to be tethered
to the what? To the text. And what that means
is, remember that ball stood out there on the rope on the
end of that pole. And when you would hit that ball,
the momentum would send it in that sort of G force around,
but it wouldn't go way out there because it was what? Tethered
to the pole. And when we are faithful expositors
of the word of God, the speaker is going to always be tethered
to the what text. So his talk is not going to go
so far out into left field that you see no relationship to what
he's talking about and what he's alleging to be biblical. So with
the apostle Paul, what you see is a fine discourse and illustration
of textual teaching. If you'll notice what he says
over in verse 27 the latter part for they that dwell at Jerusalem
and the rulers Because they did not know him now. He's giving
insight into the reason for which they killed him They did not
know him nor yet the voices of the what? Then he's making another
claim Consistent with their ignorance of Jesus and this is a very important
aspect of biblical truth. He's saying they didn't know
Jesus and because they didn't know their scriptures. They didn't
know Jesus because they didn't know their scriptures. In other
words, if a person is professing to be a Christian, but they're
very lazy around their Bible, it's quite possible that you
can adopt or embrace or hold to ideas that are contrary to
the word of God and thus develop a composite sketch in your own
mind of who Jesus is that does not correspond with the word
of God. I'll say that once again. And
lots of people do this. Lots of professing Christians
do this. This is the sum total of many
of your denominational churches, where the emphasis in the denomination
is on something other than the centrality of who Jesus is. the emphasis of the church based
all of its identity and credibility on something outside of the central
message of the Bible. And those people then are known
for this, they're known for that, they're known for the other thing.
And inevitably, when you begin to peer into and work through
their doctrinal emphasis, you will discover that their position
actually does not correspond with the whole tenor of scripture.
but they don't know that because they are not familiar with the
word of God enough to have reigned in their doctrinal system to
the text. In other words, we must tether
our teaching to the text if we're gonna be biblical teachers. We
must tether our talk to the text if we're gonna teach the word
of God faithfully. That means we may come up with
certain conclusions We've got to test those conclusions over
against the scriptures, don't we? Because we could be wrong. And so it is here. The apostle
Paul is saying the reason for which you guys condemned him
to death is because when you saw who he was and you watched
what he did and you began to ask the question, is he who he
claims to be? And then you began to examine
what he said and what he did over against your assumptions,
not the Bible. What you thought Messiah was
supposed to be like, as you thought he was supposed to act, when
he did not correspond to your views, rather than you examining
yourself, what you did was condemn him and called him a heretic
and put him to death. That's a very, very dangerous
place to be. Wouldn't you think? All right,
so I'll ask the question as we get ready to work through points
number nine and 10 in your outline. I told you we're at a pivotal
point. Have you ever believed something about the Bible, even
taught something about the Bible that you discovered down the
line was wrong? Wasn't it for a moment just demoralizing? Didn't it crush you? Didn't it
cause great alarm in your soul? Because you were a professor
of truth and you were boasting of what you thought you knew.
And then someone came along and pulled the curtains back and
demonstrated that the emperor had on no clothes. And what that
was all about was the shortcut to appearing to be a theologian.
It was the shortcut to appearing to be a theologian. It was the
shortcut to appearing to have knowledge about the things of
God. This is very important for us here at this point, and particularly
for those who will be listening, because my job as a pastor teacher
is to deposit into the life of the people that listen to me,
teaching. And here's what I know. When
once you, those of y'all who are listening, acquire my teaching,
you may or may not go back and examine what I'm saying as to
determine whether or not it corresponds with the word of God. You may
or may not. Now, what I try to generally do when I teach, and
this is why we advocate what is called expository teaching
and preaching. That is we try to work out the
text in your presence. We work out the text in your
face. This is what I do on Sundays.
I don't leave to 700 people the assumption that they're gonna
go out and study these things. This is why you get five and
seven points with your pastor. And then four sub points for
every point. Do you guys remember that? With
four and five verses per point. It's a lot of work, isn't it?
I do that every week. I give it to you every week.
You know what that means? You get to go home and just go
look through those verses and determine whether those verses
correspond with my point, with my supposition, with my conclusions. You get a chance to see whether
or not, even though the message may have sounded good and your
eyes may have been open to something, let me go back and check it out.
So what I don't do is leave my congregation, leave the people
that are listening to me in the dark as to how I drew my conclusions. And I think all expositors should
do that. because see what it does is it
allows you to go into the kitchen with me. I'm the cook. So I'm
bringing out the meal and you're enjoying the meal, right? But
you, you don't know what went on in that kitchen. When you're an expositor, you
actually let people into the kitchen to see how we put it
together. And particularly when I will
labor in the grammar or in the history or in the nuances of
the text in your presence. Now this here, is really relatively
new in Western Christian preaching because most preaching has been
make mention of a text and then have at it in terms of just rhetoric,
anecdotal stories, and just, you know, all kinds of stuff
added on top of just the mentioning of a text. We will often call
that sort of topical preaching. Or just basic, uh, dramatic preaching
or in, in biblical, in the biblical sense of the word, it's not preaching
at all. It's just talking. And as a consequence,
when people go away from that kind of experience, they may
have been moved by the message, but they learn nothing about
the Bible. And when you go through that
week in and week out, week in and week out, week in and week
out, year in and year out, year in and year out, you come to
discover that that ministry was not teaching you anything. You
were hearing messages, had great titles, all kinds of, you know,
nice, funny titles on the sermon that cause you to remember. Oh
yeah, I remember that one. He was talking about the pointer
or whatever the case may be. All kinds of weird and bizarre
and quirky things. The problem is, Preaching ought
to take you deeper into the text. Preaching ought to take you deeper
into the text. So those of us who are concerned
with making sure that when you leave here, that you know more
about your Bible than you did when you came, we use this method
and approach. Now, this is the slow, long road
to glory. And this is what Paul and them
are doing. And he knows now he has to talk about the hard stuff.
Because in preaching and teaching, you have to talk about the hard
stuff. He's talking about the death of Christ by the rulers. Point A, the rulers at Jerusalem
were ignorant of the scriptures. Paul is echoing what Jesus said
in Matthew 22, 19. I want you to see it again, 29.
Matthew chapter 22, listen to what it says. The Lord Jesus
Christ dealt with the same thing and he knew it. He knew that
he was dealing with people who actually did not understand it.
Remember when the Sadducees came to him in verse 23? Same day
they came to him, the Sadducees would say, there is no what?
Resurrection. This is Matthew 22, 23. Now for
a person not to believe in the resurrection, but call themselves
Christian, that immediately betrays their ignorance of both the gospel
and the Bible. Is that true? The same day they
came to him saying, There's no resurrection in action. Master,
Moses said, if a man died, having no children, his brother shall
marry his wife and raise up seed unto him, seed unto his brother. Now there was with us seven brothers. And the first, when he had married
a wife, deceased and having no issue, left his wife unto his
brother, no children, that is. Likewise, the second also, the
third unto the seventh. And the last of all, the woman
died also. Now watch this. In verse 25,
They make the story out to be real. Look at the first line. Now there was with us. Do you
see it? Now there was with us. So this
is what we call expository teaching. I now call your attention to
the text. I lift the text up and I call your attention to
a specific aspect of the text. I'm not explaining the text.
I'm highlighting the text. The text is speaking for itself.
Is it not? So rather than when we read it
through smoothly and we don't deal with the contours, the nooks
and the crannies, the valleys and the mountaintops, you can
read through it and not see these nuances. I'm calling your attention
to it because that first line is teaching us that what the
Pharisees or the Sadducees rather are doing is letting Jesus know
that this is something with them for which it is a reality and
a truth. It's not just a myth that he's
throwing out. They're saying to him, Now there
was with us seven brothers. So for Jesus, although he knew
their minds, he is now dealing with what fundamentally is to
be viewed as a true story. It's plausible. I mean, can you
imagine that? Seven brothers marry one sister,
they all die. Now, can I be honest with you
for a second? This is called a turnaround before you go back
to the text. Now, if I was the fifth brother, I'm going to go
back now. I got a little bit worried when
you got a little bit worried. If I was the fifth brother and
you got seven brothers. Now the fifth brother should
have said, you know what? I think I'm, I think I'm going
to be celibate. I think I'm going to be a priest and they all died. But I can
tell you a story when I was in the church in my earlier days
of a person who, a couple of ladies I knew, they did that
to their husbands. Both of them had a couple husbands
and they both died. And it was such a weird thing,
such a weird thing. I left it alone though. But every
time I read this text, it bothered me, made me wonder, you know?
And they ended up being widows because their husbands died.
Both of them died for both of them. And these ladies are still
living. It's just weird, you know, just weird. Some things
are past finding out. I just want you to know. Therefore,
they said in the resurrection, see verse eight. Therefore, verse
28, therefore, in the resurrection, the woman having also died, whose
wife shall she be of the what? Seven. For they all had her. Now, This becomes a story for
which if Jesus wanted to entertain them, he could have talked about
the, uh, the elaborate law in the old Testament where the,
uh, Moses had said, you ought to raise up seed to your brother
and, and all of that kind of stuff. And that, uh, this woman,
when she gets to heaven, fundamentally, she's not going to have a relationship
with any of these men because when you get to heaven, there's
a whole new dynamic going on. But what Jesus does before explaining
that is he calls them on the carpet. for their ignorance of
the word of God. Here's what he says. He says
in verse 29, and Jesus answered and said unto them, you do what? Er. Now this is our Greek word,
and I talked about this a few weeks ago, planeo, from which
we get the term to er, or to apostatize. It means to veer, from the course. It has the same
idea as a falling star. It's the term that's used in
its noun form for stars in the book of Jude, where Jude speaks
of false prophets as the wandering stars reserved for the midst
of darkness forever. So when you see shooting stars
or falling stars, those showers of stars that fall out of the
hemisphere, out of the sky, they lose their energy base and they
just dissipate. That's a picture of false prophets
apostatizing. Departing from their place in
the heavenly and celestial body that represents the body of Christ
Christ is the Sun the moon is the law We are the stars and
when we are in our place, we are shining in the kingdom of
God That's what the Bible says, but remember what Jesus said
in Luke chapter 10. I see Satan falling from heaven
like what lightning and what it means is that When you and
I are professing to be Christians, but we actually depart from biblical
truth and start walking in error, we're like a falling star. We
are like a falling star because we are departing from that place,
that position that God has us in, in order to be light in a
dark place. The dark place is the sky. The
light is the believer. That light gives light to the
true light in order that my people might actually have light. And
so what Jesus is saying to these rulers and these teachers, the
Sadducees, is that you do err, you do err, you are apostatizing,
you have departed from the truth, and here's the reason why. You
do not know the what? Scriptures. It's the word of
God. Nor the what? Power of God. So
there's a tie-in between scripture and what? Power. Quite fascinating. Because in our present generation,
there is also the assumption that you can be mightily anointed
by the Spirit of God, fully invested with the anointing of the Spirit,
and yet be ignorant of the Bible. I want you to hear me now. This
is a very serious charge. I mean, he's so anointed, she's
so anointed, and yet their teachings are erroneous. You can't be anointed. and be in error at the same time. You can't be under the unction
of the Holy Spirit. I'm gonna show you that here
in a moment. And yet be teaching damnable heresy at the same time. You can't be under the anointing
of the spirit of truth and actually teach lies. Isn't that a contradiction? So it's important for you and
I to know that when Jesus says, not knowing the scriptures nor
the power of God, that an individual must not think that they can
separate their experience of the power of God from the truth
of God's word for which the power is given. The power is given
that the truth might be made manifest. The power is not given
so that an individual can laud himself or lift himself up or
make himself great in the presence of people. The power is given
so that truth can be exalted. So that truth can be known because
the goal of God is to reside in the hearts of men as light
shining in a dark place. Am I making some sense? This
is very important then. This is how you know them when
you're in the presence of those who are anointed. When you are
in the presence of those who are anointed, ladies and gentlemen,
they are men and women and people who have spent time with God
and have gotten their understanding of the word of God right. They
have labored before God in humility, and they have sought a proper
approach to biblical interpretation, which requires patient labor
in the word of God with sound rules of interpretation. They
have checked their conclusions over against the body of Christ
at large, men and women who have been faithful and proven to be
faithful. Why? Because out of the mouth
of two or three witnesses, let every word be established. Why?
Because other men have labored and we have entered into their
labor. Why? Because no man is an island.
Why? Because the Holy Ghost doesn't
teach one person one thing and another person something else.
Why? Because though there be many
masters of assembly, there's only one shepherd who gives us
all the instructions. And you're not going to have
a body of truth radically different than my body of truth, and the
person over there is not going to have a body of truth radically
different than our body of truth, and it be coming from the same
shepherd. Are you guys hearing what I'm saying? And this is
one of the things that gives us confidence when we are able
to hear sound teaching and then have it affirmed elsewhere in
the body of Christ, where men and women have the character
of godliness associated with their teaching calling. Very
important, very important. One of the reasons why people
end up in cults is because of a lack of these principles. They
end up in cults because they find themselves enamored by and
under the influence and teaching of some very charismatic person,
but that charismatic person is not themselves approved by the
body at large. And so they may take a whole
group of people on an excursion theologically, and it sounds
like they got some fantastic truth, but that truth is not
tested by the historic faith of the believer and the church
of Jesus Christ to be proven to be veritable and faithful
to the word of God until that cult shipwrecks. And generally
what happens when cults shipwreck is that the individual or groups
of people in those sets become so lofty in their own eyes and
soul as it were out of touch with reality. that the people
under their authority don't have any ability to influence them
whatsoever. And they're like helium balloons
rising up until the wind blows them in a direction where the
crash is inevitable. The sad thing about that is when
they crash, the people crash. Why? Because what you're doing
when you become part of a local body or a part of a group or
part of a cult or part of any kind of institution where this
individual is so uniquely gifted that nobody understands them.
Follow this. You start actually vicariously
identifying with them. And their failure is your failure. Are you hearing me? And so you
do everything you can to keep them lifted up. You do everything
you can to keep them from falling. This happens in churches all
the time. Even when these pastors and teachers are falling, these
falling stars are taking place. While they are taking place,
the people are trying to prop them up and protect them and
cover them so that no one sees them falling because the fall
of the leader is the fall of the people. share something with
you to let you off the hook real quick, and then we'll go back
to our text. This is important for you. If you haven't discovered
the plumb line, essential for every Christian to make sure
that when one Christian falls, you don't fall, then you're going
to always be susceptible to this dynamic that I've just shared
with you. When you understand the plumb line essential, for
you that when you are a part of a group or part of a church
or part of a denomination, that should the denomination go to
hell and some denominations do. We have whole denominations that
have abandoned the Bible. Are you guys hearing me? Whole
churches that have abandoned the Bible. But if you have a
plumb line, a faithful biblical plumb line, and I'm going to
share it with you here right now, that'll help you. It'll keep
you from falling when everyone else will fall. Are you ready?
Here it is. Learning what it means that when
you hear preaching and teaching you are looking for the preaching
of the gospel the centrality of Jesus Christ a God-exalting
Christ centered Bible based teaching Watch this now that does not
cause you to be dependent upon the church, but upon Christ I'm
gonna say it again so you can get this because this generation
needs to hear this teaching that does not set you in front of
Jesus Christ, and a Christ that is clearly taught by the Bible
so that you can prove scripturally that this person of whom they
are teaching is a Bible Christ that I can depend upon, where
that's not happening, I guarantee you they are perceptibly or imperceptibly
drawing you into allegiance with the system. And when the system
falls, you fall. and your pride and your confidence
is rooted in men and in churches and not in Christ. So I'm gonna
share with you a few verses for those of you who are new with
us. Some of you guys are old and you know this. One of the
things we set out to do when we first started Grace many years
ago was to have this one reputation everywhere. Whenever people think
about Grace Bible Church, here's what they have to think about.
This is a church that's radically committed to gospel preaching
and teaching. What that means is they are always
talking about Jesus Christ. You're not going to go long at
grace without hearing Christ preached and Christ taught. Now,
here's the reason why. It's not that we don't understand
every other element of systematic theology, church history, comparative
religions, and so forth. We teach it all here. But what
we do is we take every one of those disciplines and we subsume
it under the one reality for which scripture was given and
that's Jesus Christ. And where the church is not disciplined
enough to know that when you enter into a Bible study or a
worship service and Christ is not the ultimate subject of the
preaching, you are already in trouble. You don't even know
it. you are already in trouble. That
person might be teaching that day on a very important subject
with which you wanted some answers. Let's say on the Sabbath, you
know, you got your Sabbatarians, you know, seven day Adventists
and they know their Bibles really well. In fact, most cults know
their Bible better than average Christians know their Bible.
And so you've been struggling with whether or not we're supposed
to worship on Saturday or on Sunday. You haven't really gotten
a good answer from your basic, you know, run-of-the-mill Christian
pastor, because he really don't teach. He runs from you, he'll
send you, you know, to the internet or somewhere, tell you to pray
about it. He won't explain the word. I'm telling you the truth. So you're beholden to either
running and hiding from the cults, or going to find someone that's
willing to actually work through these, these very important topics,
although they are not the central topic. So here you are challenged
with someone telling you that the Catholic church changed worship
from the sixth day of the week, seventh day of the week, to the
first day of the week. That to worship on Sunday is a sign of
worshiping Satan. That's exactly what they teach
in the Seventh-day Adventist church. And so all kinds of Christians
are scared to death about whether or not we have violated the fourth
commandment in the Decalogue. And so, you know, they struggle
with that and therefore many people worship on Saturday Trying
to appease their soul What I say to those people is you have just
been duped by the legalist Because you are now basing your confidence
and your peace on a day and not a person Are you guys hearing
me But that's what legalism does. That's what cults do. They get
you off of Jesus and they change the foundation of your eternality,
of your destiny by saying, unless you are on this foundation with
us, you have no security of your salvation. Same thing goes with
water baptism. The churches of Christ do the
same thing. Unless you're baptized in our churches, you can't be
saved. Oneness Pentecostal love to teach unless you said in Jesus
name we talked about that Now you're trapped by what we call
superficial grammar rules that can easily be debunked in the
Word of God Same thing with speaking in tongues. You know how you've
been trapped with that if you don't speak in tongues You don't
have any evidence of the Holy Ghost now you have totally missed
the centrality of what the scriptures say is the sum and substance
of all theology and that's Jesus and and him crucified. First
Corinthians chapter 2 verse 2. Pull it up. First Corinthians
2 verse 2. I'm going to share with you guys some principles.
just in case you don't know. You can write these down. I can
run these from my head. Psalm 40 verse 7, write it down. John
5, 39, write it down. First Peter chapter 1, verse
10, write it down. Revelation chapter 19, verse
10, write it down. Psalm 40 verse 7, write it down. John 5, 39, write it down. First Peter 1, 10, write it down. Revelation chapter 19, verse
10, write it down. John 5, 39. First Peter 1, 10. Revelation chapter 19 10 Psalm
40 verse 7 I can give you a bunch more Acts chapter 10 verse 38
through 40 Very clearly lays out what we call the centrality
of biblical hermeneutics. The Bible is about Jesus The Bible is about Jesus Now
my text defends me today, doesn't it that Paul went up into the
synagogue and what did he preach? Jesus So mark what first Corinthians
chapter two verse two says, if I can get that up on the board
sometime between now and class is over. First Corinthians, I
love you up there, Jerry, you know I love you. First Corinthians
chapter two verse two, I want you to hear what Paul says. Now
here's the very person that is speaking to his Jewish brethren
is laying down what we call the basic modus operandi. the, the,
the, the, the foundation for determining what it means to
be a preacher of the gospel. This is first Corinthians chapter
two. I'm going to go there in my Bible. Y'all got your Bible.
Let's just go there. First Corinthians chapter two, verse two. Now I
want you to hear what Paul says. This is what Paul says as he's
speaking to the church at Corinth, knowing that the church at Corinth
have also left the foundation. They are a mess. The church at
Corinth. They've already rejected the
man who helped establish that church. And they have opened
the door for secular philosophers, mystics, and false prophets to
come into the church of Corinth. So much so that the church of
Corinth lauds itself and boasts itself that it's of Paul and
of Apollos and of Cephas and of this one and of that one and
Paul fiercely rebukes them in second Corinthians chapter 11
when he says, you guys suffer fools gladly. They come in and
they preach another Jesus with another gospel and another spirit. This is how bad the church at
Corinth was. I want to show you what Paul said to them as the
rule, as the plumb line with which he actually not only proclaims
the gospel, but tests to see whether or not people are Christian.
So this works on both sides. You get to test me and I get
to test you. Watch how this works. In first
first Corinthians chapter two, two, here's what Paul says. For
I am determined not to know anything among you except what? You ain't done. Did you see that
last line? You got to say the whole thing.
Not just Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ and him crucified. So
now I'm going to start right there and just work this into,
massage this into your thinking. This will save you from every
heresy, every cult, every false doctrine, every false teaching,
every alluring Bible study, every alluring message on the internet.
You know how you get these little messages on the internet, these
little sort of esoteric Bible studies that last about three
minutes. talking about something, leading you somewhere. You don't
know where you're starting. You don't know where you're going.
And along the ride, they are explaining scripture in bizarre
and weird ways. And you think you're about to
get a revelation and it ends up empty. And you say, what have
I done for the last 20 minutes following this guy down this
rabbit trail? What you've done is not drop
the plumb line on his teaching the first minute he started talking.
What you've done is not drop the plumb line on his teaching
the first minute he started talking. Whenever you listen to anyone
teach, the first thing you ask is this, where is Christ in this
teaching? That's the first thing you ask. When you go into a church service
because you're on vacation somewhere, Bahamas, Las Vegas, Hollywood,
wherever. And you decide to go to church
and you sit there like my wife and I did. We were in San Juan,
Puerto Rico a couple of years ago. No, last year. And we decided
to go to church because that's my habit. I like to go to church.
I'm just, I'm going to worship wherever I go. If it ain't no
church, I'm going to gather a bunch of people around and read the
Bible, even to the pagan. Y'all come sit with me. I'm used
to worship. So just sit there. I'll read.
I'll do the preaching. And so we went to a little, it
was a Episcopal church. Somebody at the hotel had said,
oh, the pastor there actually preaches the Bible. I said, okay,
I'll go. Not that when you use the term
actually preaches the Bible really mean anything, but at least they
say he preached the Bible, right? Because a lot of churches, they
don't even preach the Bible. Now, I don't go to those churches.
I hear that's what they say. But we went to church and in
five minutes, I was ready to go. Do you know why? Because
I dropped the plumb line and I said, man, where Jesus at?
This is about to be a Christian church. This is about to be Christian
people having a Christian worship and Christ ain't here. Isn't
that a problem? All right. So I endured worship
because I'm trying to be a good husband. And I wanted to get at the pastor
right after the service. But I was with my wife, so I
didn't do it. My point is I couldn't worship
because my savior wasn't there. I don't care how nice the building
is, how great the music is, how nice the people are. If Christ
is not there, the whole thing is high treason against God.
to purposely leave him out just to cater to the people is the
very error that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 22. Are you
guys hearing me? When you drop the plumb line
and Jesus is not the subject, you have every right to get up
and leave right then and there. It'd be better that you go out
and take a ride down the shore and thank God for the sunny day.
Stick in a Bible study, read your Bible, worship with God
and go on about the rest of your day and join the Lord. Do you
guys hear what I just said? It's very important for you to
know that because you will waste your time when you go to churches
and you don't drop that plumb line. For I am determined not
to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ. You know what we
call that? The person. and him crucified. You know what
we call that? The work. What is the gospel? The person
and work of Jesus Christ. What is the gospel? It's the
person and work of Jesus Christ. The gospel is not the Bible. The gospel is contained in the
Bible. The gospel is the Bible rightly
divided. You can be in the Bible and die
and go to hell. You can be stuck in the Old Testament
with Moses or the priesthood or in the wilderness going round
and around and around and around again with men who are not pointing
you to Christ who is the sum and substance of the teaching
of the Word of God. You can be caught up and mesmerized
about the six days of creation But if you don't see in the creation
account the Lord Jesus Christ as the Word made flesh, as the
Son of righteousness, as the light shining out of darkness,
as the true man of God with which Adam is simply typical of, you
have missed the gospel. If you don't see in Genesis chapter
1 the atonement of Jesus Christ by the going down of the sun
and the resurrection of Christ by the rising of the sun, you
have missed the gospel. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? So the Bible says from Genesis 1-1 to Revelation 22
and 21, we are to look for Jesus Christ and Him crucified because
it's there. I battle with theologians right
now over this hermeneutical principle. I battle with them all the time.
Because they'll tell me quite frequently they believe in this
set of teachings that I'm talking about. Oh yeah, we believe Christ
is in every part of the book. But then when I listen to their
studies, they don't go there. I say, now where is Jesus at
in that study? Well, he's not there. He is there. Well, I don't
see him. That's the point. That's the
point. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? That's the point. You can demonstrate in every
scripture, either the person or the work or both when you
carefully exegete the word of God. And that's what Christians
ought to be looking for. By the way, brothers and sisters,
what I'm sharing with you is old. This goes way back to the
reformation. And this goes way back before
the reformation. This is apostolic teaching, by the way. And then
when the apostles died off, the patristic fathers taught like
this. They taught like this all the way up to about the fifth
century. until Catholicism set in and scholasticism set in. And then it had to be delivered
from in the pre-reformation period when our brothers once again
recovered the Bible and they opened the Bible and the Holy
Ghost said, no, this is about Jesus. This is not about Orthodox
Christianity or Catholicism is about Christ. And then they began
to recover the gospel. You see in every generation,
guess what? We got to recover the gospel.
In every generation, we got to recover the gospel. And I really
believe that's where we are today. We are in a day where the gospel
has to be recovered in our generation that men and women are not jealous
of jesus Do you know what that shunamite woman said in the book
of song of solomon? Have you seen him? Whom my soul
loves I'm ravished with his love He looked upon me one time and
he won me over and she was so in love with him, she put on
her night coat and slippers and went out at nighttime looking
for him. Now, do you know how dangerous
it is in the streets of Jerusalem? That's like walking West Oakland
or Hunters Point or the Mission District in San Francisco in
your house coat and slippers. But when you are serious about
finding the one whom you love, you don't care what you do. You
will hazard high waters and hell to find him, will you not? And
that's what those who are redeemed will do when it comes to looking
for a church Where jesus christ is taught and preached because
the holy ghost is drawing you to jesus The holy ghost is not
drawing you to tricks and scams and and smoke and mirrors and
all of that old fancy stuff He's drawing you to one person and
and that's jesus. And that's the only way I know
that you're a christian And that's the only way you know that i'm
a christian. We both have the same we in love with the same
person And we're going to fight them because we're in love with
the same person. In love with the same person. Did you get
that? It's very important for you to understand that. And this
is exactly what Paul is doing in our text. Go back to our text.
You guys got the other verses, right? Psalm 40 verse 7, John
chapter 5, 39, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 2, 1 Peter 1, 10,
Revelation 19, 10. You got it all, right? Plus you
can get the CD, listen to it 10 times and you guys will get
it. What those passages teach is
very important. I've shared with our class this
Luke chapter 24, verses 24 through 44, is the same thing. If you actually believe what
the Bible says, and you read Psalm 40, verse seven, and it
says, lo, I come, and the volume of the book is written of me,
and that's Jesus talking, either you actually take him serious
or you don't. Now see, I don't believe Jesus is a liar. I don't
think he exaggerates. I don't think he spawns myths. I don't think he uses hyperboles. I think he was right when he
said, from Genesis to Revelation, this book is about me. You are
searching the scriptures and in them you think you have eternal
life, but they are they which testify of me. Can you imagine
the Pharisees and the Sadducees reading the Bible? The Pharisees
got phylacteries on their arms, on their legs, and big old boxes
on their forehead and still miss Jesus. Isn't that wild? Big old concordances on their
forehead. Got their forehead till they
walking down the street talking about, I got the Bible, but the
Bible wasn't in their heart. That's the problem. Neither did
they know the author of the book. It's one thing to have the book.
It's another thing to have the author of the book. Am I making
some sense? It's one thing to know about
God. It's another thing to know God. Does that make some sense? And it's very important to know.
It's very important to know. Because if they take your Bible,
they haven't taken anything from you. Hallelujah. Those are shouting words. Listen,
let me tell you something. The goal of the Spirit of God
is to reveal Christ not to you, but in you. The goal of the Holy
Ghost is to reveal Christ not to you, but in you. So that when once he has revealed
Christ in you, nobody can take him away. They can take my Bible. I've got the Savior and I've
got the Spirit of the living God. Am I good to go? You know
what that means? The Holy Ghost can bring back
to my remembrance from Genesis to Revelation, Everything I've
learned since I was 18 years old, and I've studied and I've
learned so much about the word of God, but my mind is fixed
on Jesus. And I'm like everybody else.
I'm a wicker basket. You know what that means? I leak
all the time. I'm leaking all the time. So
God's got to keep pouring it in because it goes to leaking
out. But because the Holy Ghost is there, he knows how to hold
the water in. He knows how to pour it in. And
so sometimes I'm just walking with the Lord and he'll call
back a text of scripture that I forgot about 20 years ago and
say, Lord, look at that. Look at that. And he will bring
all things into remembrance concerning me. He will take the things of
mine and he will show them to you. He will not glorify himself.
The Holy Ghost does not glorify himself. He does not puff himself
up. He does not make himself large.
His one unique job is to exalt Jesus. This is how we know we
got him because he makes Jesus a reality to your soul. This
is how you know you have the spirit of God because he makes
Jesus a reality to your soul. Ladies and gentlemen, are you
hearing what I'm saying? You do not have the spirit of God.
If Christ means little or nothing to you, because I can show you
here in a moment, going back to Acts chapter 13, there are
two people in the universe for whom Jesus means everything. There are two people in the universe
for whom Jesus means everything and they are banking all their
reputation on him. That's the father and the spirit. Those two persons bank all their
reputation on Jesus. You guys got that? all of their
reputation hangs on this one man whom they both love with
everything that's in them. They then put the whole of their
glory, the whole of their honor, the whole of their reputation,
the whole of their existence, the whole of their fame on Jesus. Jesus right now bears, according
to Colossians chapter one, are you ready? The fullness of the
Godhead bodily. They have poured into Jesus the
totality of reputation when it comes to who God is. They both
have said, if people don't get us through Jesus, they can't
get us. That's love, isn't it? That's love. That's love. Back
in Acts chapter 13. Got a few more minutes, then
I'll take some questions. Listen to this. I thought this was quite
fascinating. Now, Paul has done what he's
supposed to do. He's preached to his Jewish brethren.
I don't know if Paul senses it in his soul, but they are not
really liking his message. And probably he doesn't. He says
over in verse 29, after having said, and in them you have fulfilled
them, verse 29, and when they have fulfilled all that was written
of him, there it is again, the scriptures were fulfilled when
the Jewish people crucified Jesus They took him down from the tree,
laid him in a sepulcher, and even that was the fulfillment
of the scriptures, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Watch this. They laid
him in a sepulcher, and here is the argument, but God raised
him from the dead. See, so now we are at the nexus
of the gospel. Pull my PowerPoint up, because
I want to make sure that I get into our last one. Now we are
at the nexus of the gospel. First, the rulers at Jerusalem
were ignorant of the scriptures, and because of that, it ended
up that they killed him. They killed the Christ, verse
28, 29. He rose, and there are what? Right, exactly. In fact, Paul
is talking to them as a witness himself, is he not? Did Paul
witness the resurrection of Christ? Wasn't that one of the qualifications
for being an apostle? All right, so what's going on
with these dudes today? Somebody help me. Y'all didn't
get that. You know, these dudes who are
talking about being apostles, right? You got these dudes who saying
that I got an apostolic call, right? Is that what they say?
Right? It's going on in all of your
charismatic churches. I'm called to be an apostle.
Now I don't have a problem with the little a I'm talking about
like the real little a because the Greek term apostello means
to send to send, but the big A apostle from which they actually
broker all of their influence in order to become some great
anointed person who then leverages that position and office to become
wealthy and prosperous, they have bastardized the apostolic
calling. Are you hearing me? And ignorant
people who don't know their Bibles will call them the apostle this,
the apostle that, the apostle The other in ignorance of the
scriptures. Do you remember what the scripture
says were necessary qualifications to being an apostle? You have
had to actually see the risen Lord. That was a necessary qualification. And this is where Paul is at
in the text when he says, and there are many witnesses. the
11 apostles, and then Paul being one born out of due season, and
then 500 brethren saw him, didn't they? Those are the 500, those
are the collective who have gone through Jerusalem saying, he
has risen, he has risen, he has risen, he has risen. In order
for you to be a legitimate apostle, not only must you have seen the
Lord Jesus. Now, when somebody come to you
and say, I saw it, say, uh-oh, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do,
Here's the second qualification. If you are an authentic apostle,
not only have you seen the Lord Jesus, but you have the unique
apostolic gifts of healings and signs and wonders that are beyond
every other office in the church. Are you hearing me? It's called
the messianic gift of being able to raise the dead because this
is what's going on in the book of Acts. They're raising the
dead. Why? Because they're endued with the very messianic power
that Christ discharged to them to affirm the fact that he was
the Messiah. They're raising the dead. They're performing
authentic miracles. And you remember how they did
it? They would say this, Hey, we didn't do this. The father's
glorifying himself and he's glorifying his son. We didn't do this. God
did this. They're not owning or attributing the power to heal
to themselves. They are attributed to God and
Christ. God the father is glorifying
his son. So what I say for people who
get wrapped up in apostles today, I say, was he there when Jesus
rose bodily? Do they have the power to open
the eyes of the blind? Do they have the power to raise
the dead? Can they actually authentically heal the sick? Not headaches,
toothaches, alleged short legs, crouched over backs, My you know,
I came in my ear. I couldn't hear out of this ear
lay hands on you. I can hear hallelujah All these
are scams All these are scams Are you hearing me? And it's
sad and damnable, but it's so and they keep doing them Because
people are ignorant of their bibles Because they don't have
a plumb line Are you hearing what i'm saying? The witnesses are stated for
us in verse 30 and 31. God raised him from the dead.
And when he was seeing many days of them, which came with him
from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people.
I like the way Paul put it. He's staying tied to the historicity. What that means is those that
came with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem are who the apostles
and the sisters that were with them. And the work that was largely
done up in the North, rather than the central Palestine where
Jerusalem is. They were up there in Gentile
country. I love this. Hallelujah, Lord. The Lord hung
out in the hood. Just want you to get that way
up north in the hood. Galilee, the territory of the
Gentiles. The people that sat in darkness
saw a great light. Galilee was where you had your
Aramaic Jews, your Hellenistic Jews, your ghetto Gentiles. And they all lived together,
happy, poor, broke, happy. And Jesus lived right there.
Isn't that amazing? He did most of his ministry up
north. Do you know the only time he came down to Jerusalem was
three times a year when his daddy said, we all got to go down because
he was a Jew. Then he zipped back on up. And then that third
year he finally came on down to be what? Killed. Because a
prophet could not be killed out of what? Jerusalem. Isn't that
amazing? He came unto his own and his
own received him not. But he did most of his ministry
among people who were not acquainted, watch this now, with the traditional
and with the organized system called Judaism. The organized
system rejected Jesus and does to this day. Y'all got that? This is an amazing concept. Go
with me then, pull up our next PowerPoint. I wanna crash into
this for a second. I'm gonna close with one statement. This gospel was preached to you
with scripture affirmation, point eight, go to PowerPoint 11. I
need to see what's in there if we have one, do we? Is that it?
Okay, there we go. Now, the Gentiles will receive
it. This is verses 46 through 48. But in my outline, I have
something else and I don't want to touch on that. I don't want
to touch this until next week. So look with me at verse 32 and
verse 33 and verse 34. And I'm just going to call your
attention to verse 33 and we're going to close it out for tonight.
After that, the apostle has affirmed that Jesus came down from Jerusalem
after he rose again from the dead with witnesses preaching
to the people in central Palestine, the regions of Jerusalem and
Judea, which is where the book of acts is centered. He says,
and we declare unto you, this is Paul now speaking up in the
Asia minor area of Pisidia as you saw it back in verse 13 and
14 and we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise,
Watch this, which was made unto who? The fathers. So what Paul
is doing when he goes, we, he's talking about himself as a Jew.
He's now recalling the promise of the scriptures, which was
first made to whom? The fathers. Who are the fathers
in view? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That
being the case right now, the Jewish people who have really
struggled with killing Jesus and Jesus rising from the dead.
Now they have to struggle with the promise. Still being tied
to daddy, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, what Paul
is doing is making sure that they stay in the picture, stay
in the equation. I want to keep you here because God raised him
from the dead. We messed up, but God raised him from the dead.
By the way, that's what we call the gospel. We messed up, but
God raised him from the dead. Is that good? We messed up, but
God raised him from the dead. because the resurrection of Christ
solves all of our messed up mess. Here it is. God hath fulfilled
the same unto us, their what? So now Paul is speaking in the
first person plural, is he not? God has fulfilled the same unto
us, their children in that he hath raised up Jesus again, Now
watch how he anchors it to the text. Remember what we said?
Our talk must be tethered to the what? Text. Is his talk tethered
to the text? He's constantly, after every
three or four sentences, saying, thus saith the Lord, anchoring
it to the Bible. That's how you know you're in
a good teaching. They just don't take you on some long excursion
where you leave America, head on down to Europe, the scenic
route, And don't even make it back before the end of the service.
Right? You're supposed to be constantly
anchored to the shore of biblical truth when it's sound biblical
exposition. Listen to this beautiful truth.
And I'll open this up the Lord willing next week. God has fulfilled
the same unto us, their children in that he raised up Jesus again. This is crazy because what Paul
is saying to his Jewish brethren is if you read your Bibles, God
said that he would raise Jesus from the dead. And then he goes
on to say, as it is also what written in the second Psalm. Now here is where the crux of
the battle begins. He quotes Psalm two verses four
and following, which is what we're working on in our Bible
study right now, by the way, you better get it off the chain. Here's what he says. As it is
written in the second Psalm, you are my son. This day have I begotten you. You know what he does right here
in Psalm two? He reminds every Jew who worships in Torah at
the synagogue and at the temple three times a year of what they
celebrate in their reading of the Psalms about the coming of
their great King and Messiah. Psalm 2 is a celebratory Psalm
of the anointing of the King Messiah for whom the Jews are
utterly and anxiously waiting. Paul has just anchored the fulfillment
of Psalm 2 to this Jesus. Do you understand how soon and
how quick their computer is about to crash now? Because the implications
Psalm 2 in relationship to having raised Jesus from the dead means
that these people have totally missed the Messiah Totally missed
must in other here's what they're saying. They're sitting there
going if this man is right We have been out to lunch If this,
if Jesus of Nazareth, of whom we have been told he's a child
of fornication, he is a son of Beelzebub, he's a drunkard, he's
a wine bipper, he's a glutton, he's a whoremonger, they talk
bad about Jesus, because he lived in the hood. If they're right,
and this is Messiah, we are utterly blind. See, they are nailed to
the wall right now, And I don't have time to work it through,
but you'll hear the explanation of this statement this day. I
have begotten you as I deal with Psalm two on this Wednesday,
and then we'll come back next week and deal with it. Cause
what David, what Paul is saying is Jesus is Lord and Jesus is
King and he is Lord and King forever. That the Jews should
not be looking for another Messiah. because there's not another one
coming. See, at this point, here's what's getting ready to happen.
And this is how it goes when the gospel actually gets preached
to people who thought they already knew the gospel, but come to
discover that they didn't know the gospel. This happens. Watch
this. In about a nanosecond in the heart, you go, is it possible? And then you go, no. And the
heart hardens because you want to save yourself. from the fact
that you could have been horribly, horribly wrong. Are you guys hearing me? But
thankfully God hadn't done that. Hopefully you believe the gospel.
Hopefully you trust Christ as your Lord and Savior. Hopefully
you see Jesus, the son of the living God, as the one mediator
between man and God, God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Hopefully
you see that he is the sum and substance of all of God's promises
to us and that trusting in Christ safely secures you for all eternity. And there's no other name given
among men under heaven by which we must be saved. Amen. Father, we thank you for this
time. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your son. We
thank you for this admonition to make sure that we are tethered
to the scriptures. We thank you for reminding us
that the plumb line for examining all teaching, all teachers, all
alleged teachers is Jesus Christ and him crucified. We thank you
that the message is simple and singular, though profound and
infinite in many ways, but it is simple enough for a child
to get it. And so if a child can get it, adults can get it
too. It simply requires our hearts being prepared to receive your
word by your spirit. And I pray that that might be
the case for everyone in here. As we go our way, give us traveling
mercies, prepare us to enjoy not only tomorrow's time as we
fellowship with one another, but also as we gather together
on Sunday to hear more about your glorious truth, we pray
in Jesus name, amen.